


For Your Eyes Only

by Defira



Series: Throw Your Arms Around Me (Or At Least Throw A Punch) [6]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-26
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-06 14:21:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/736642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defira/pseuds/Defira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After surviving the run through the Omega 4 Relay, Elise Shepard returns to the Alliance to try and minimise the fallout from her involvement in the destruction of Alpha Relay and the Bahak System. Her subsequent imprisonment leaves certain crew members at somewhat of a loss as to what to do with themselves. </p><p>Zaeed Massani, spending his days doing his best to piss off Cerberus, receives an anonymous message one evening with a collection of rather interesting and deeply personal video recordings. What he does with them is of course up to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The soft beep roused him from where he was dozing on the couch, and he rolled to his side to grab blearily at the datapad half hidden by a pizza box on the floor nearby. He smeared away the oil in the top corner and flicked through the screens until he found the new message.

________

_Mr Massani_

_These have recently come into our possession. We believe they would be of interest to you, and we appreciate your discretion in regards to their content._

_With regards,_

_A Friend_

________

“Yeah, because that’s not ominous at all,” he muttered, looking at the long list of files attached to the message. They were all dated, and they were all recent, and knowing his luck it’d be some pissy little scare campaign from Cerberus trying to get him back on board.

Just his fucking luck that he’d try his hand at more honest work just when the universe went to piss, really. And it was _her_ fault, her influence, that he wasn’t off doing his best to wreak havoc out among the stars and making a fuckload of money in the process, and was instead attempting legitimate employment- or at least, employment that was an annoyance to Cerberus, which was the most honest work he’d ever done in his life.

And she wasn’t even around to appreciate the effort.

Fucking typical, really.

He rubbed at his good eye with the heel of his palm, and skimmed through the list, looking for the one with the earliest timestamp on it. Knowing how _delightfully_ things had been going lately, it was probably going to be a dodgy handycam vid of some weirdo whacking off in the bushes while they watched him through the windows.

He sat up sharply when the vid opened and instead of a creep in the shrubbery, he saw Elise Shepard’s face looming large in the frame. The quality looked poor, the edges of the vid grainy and dark, but not so dark that he couldn’t recognize the tousled look of bed hair, the crooked lines of a nose broken one too many times and the familiar scarred curve of her left shoulder, the discolourations pale against her dark bronze skin.

He’d kissed every one of those scars, had traced their path with his mouth as she’d whispered his name and her breathing had hitched desperately.

It froze as it buffered, her face frozen in a small frown, and he stared in trepidation as the counter began to tick over.

**2186:02:17**

**02:32**

**[RECORDING]**

“Ah, fucking thing, are you actually recording this time?” His heart lurched up into his throat at the sound of her voice, and he scratched at the stubble on his chin to distract himself from the way his jaw worked. The good thing about sleeping alone at night was that there was no one around to notice the look on his face and laugh at him for being an obsessive old fool, but old habits died hard. “Well, little flashy light, you better not be lying to me again. Ugh, what I wouldn’t fucking give for an omni-tool.”

She was lying on her side, blankets lying loose against her- he couldn’t tell if she was completely naked, but he was having fun imagining it. Whatever she was using to record must have been propped up on another pillow in the bed, the angle not completely straight. And it was shit quality, grainy as hell and the colour balance way out on the reds. It annoyed him, because goddamn if his first sight of her after all these weeks was gonna do injustice to the raw beauty of her. 

There was the soft, muffled sound of the sheets moving as she settled back against the pillow. “Right, well…” She trailed off, and stared into the screen, and it was easy to pretend that she was looking straight at him. “Here we are, day nineteen of my captivity in this human zoo, and I am so fucking bored that I am talking to a shitty plastic tourist camera in the middle of the night even though I’m hoping no one is going to see this.”

He snorted and settled back against the couch. “Wouldn’t have thought so, would you?”

God, it was good to see her. It hurt, but in the best way. 

“So, hello camera, thank you for listening to my late night ramblings.” He cracked a smile as she laughed softly at herself. “I sound like a bad DJ. You’re up late with DJ Sheppy Shep, on Alliance FM.”

“Fucking oath, you _are_ bored sweetheart,” he laughed, shaking his head. He made a note of the name, because if the Alliance ever pulled their heads out of their asses and let her out to do her job, he’d have a good old time saluting to DJ Sheppy Shep in front of all her bright eyed recruits. 

“Ugh, enough distractions.” She shifted, the camera lurching a little bit as the mattress shifted with her; when she reached out to correct it, the blanket slipped enough that he got a nice view of curves and bared skin, enough to have him grinning appreciatively. “I am bored out of my fucking skull here- the food is okay, most days, and I convinced them to let me have the camera.” She snorted, amused at herself. “Okay, convinced is probably the wrong word, maybe wore down their resolve with relentless nagging is more accurate.”

“Heh, that’s my girl.”

“I nearly got it confiscated a couple of days ago; I almost hacked the local network.” The glee in her voice was unmistakable. “Would’ve locked all the browsers to the Fornax home page, or at least ordered myself a pizza.”

“Or, you know, stopped being a goddamn noble prat and gotten yourself out of there?” It was still a sore spot- hell, that was putting it lightly. He was fucking pissed to high water that she’d just up and handed herself over to the authorities, all over a couple thousand batarians. 

Nobody gave a shit about the batarians, until a woman with a known history against batarian slavers made the mistake of trying to save this miserable galaxy and took out a colony of the four-eyed fuckers in the process. 

And she’d just held out her hands and waited patiently for the handcuffs. Not the good kind, either. 

Just his luck to find himself tangled up with a broad with a goddamn sense of honour. 

“When the tech boys noticed me sticking my nose into the network, they just took the signal chip out of the camera and let me keep it. Don’t think they said a word to the brass, which was decent of them.”

Decent didn’t begin to cover it. He fished around blindly on the floor as she kept speaking, trying to find a beer bottle in the mess that was still full. 

“Uh, what else... I’ve met with the military lawyers a couple of times regarding stuff for the trial. The batarian ambassador- or the closest they have to one- has been kicking up a storm, apparently...” She blew at her fringe trying to get it out of her eyes. He huffed a laugh and went to reach out to brush it aside like he usually did- otherwise she’d be there for hours and she’d fucking keep him awake with her strange noises as she tried to move it without making an effort- but he realised a half second later that he was reaching for a vid screen.

He scowled at himself- getting maudlin over a goddamn vid- and sat on his hand. 

“I miss everyone,” she said softly, staring into the screen. “Everyone here is nice, but they’re so goddamn professional and polite, no one’s really gonna get all that close to a war criminal.”

“If you’re a war criminal, sweetheart, I’m a fucking boy scout,” he muttered to the screen.

“I’d kill for a poker game. Or, you know, actual conversation.” She blew at her fringe again and his fingers twitched to fix it. “Or sex. Put a lady on ice for two years and wake her up abruptly, she needs to catch up on those two years, you know?” 

_Fuck_. Just like that, he was hard; as if the sight of her half naked and sleep ruffled wasn’t bad enough, now she had to go and say a damn thing like that. He sat forward on the couch trying to find a more comfortable spot while the damned vixen continued.

“I’m just saying, I’m grateful for the handheld shower head in the bathroom here, but a girl gets lonely some nights. Fuck it, most nights.”

The image of Shepard with her back to the tiles, soaking wet and surrounded by steam, her eyes closed as she held the shower head between her open legs-

“Fucking temptress,” he grunted, reaching into his pants to free his cock. 

She huffed out a breath, and she sounded almost miserable; he hesitated, feeling guilty about wanking when she was so dejected. “I have no friends here, scant few allies, no one is fucking well doing anything about the Reapers, _and_ I can’t get laid. This is like some new and twisted version of hell.”

“You’re telling me, sweetheart.”

She blew on her fringe again, and it was like opening the floodgates. He couldn’t count the number of times she’d done that in the dark of her quarters, in the small hours of the morning, and he’d lost his patience, batting the hair away himself before crushing her into the pillows, her body hot and frantic beneath his, her lips curled into a smile beneath his mouth. 

He could have sworn it was a game to her, a teasing little dance she did to see how far she could push him before he snapped. 

And now she had apparently filmed a vid in the dead of night doing exactly the same thing, all the while talking about getting herself off in the shower and missing sex- like hell she hadn’t expected anyone to find this. His balls tightened as his grip tightened on his cock.

She heaved a sigh, the sheet slipping a little lower on her chest. 

Oh, like hell indeed. He picked up the pace, his hand moving faster. She’d just about made a fucking sex tape at this rate. 

“I miss Zaeed,” she murmured, her eyes going glassy for a moment as she stared off into the distance. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, sweetheart.”

She came back to herself, her eyes hard. “I think I need a shower,” she said, reaching for the screen.

The video closed, the timer run to the end.

He stared in shock for a moment, hand still wrapped around his cock, waiting stupidly to see if it was just a glitch and it’d start up again in a moment. “Oh, no you fucking don’t,” he said, fumbling for the touch screen with one hand while the other one kept up the rhythm. “Don’t you fucking tease me like that!”

He opened the vid again and awkwardly skimmed straight to the end. 

“-need a shower.”

The timer ran out once again. 

“Fuck!” Having a wank was all well and good, but this- she- “ _Fuck!_ ”

She’d done that deliberately. She had to know the vid would make its way to him, had to know it would wind him up, and she’d bloody well gone and left him with blue balls while she flounced off to satisfy herself. 

He found the next one in the list- thank god they were in chronological order- and hit play.

**2186:02:17**

**02:58**

**[RECORDING]**

The camera shifted as she settled back into bed. “Okay, that’s better,” she muttered, tucking the sheets back up around her shoulders.

“For you maybe,” he growled, taking in her slicked back hair and the faint flush of warmth in her cheeks. The glitter in her eyes was far too familiar, her satisfaction verging on smug. The knowledge that she’d gone and pleasured herself in the shower was enough to push him over the line; he grunted and finished himself, snatching at a crinkled napkin on the floor to clean himself up. 

“This would be a whole lot easier if I’d been allowed visitors,” she continued, oblivious to his repeated attempts to carry on a conversation with a recording. “Or guests. Massani could have come along to be my sex guest.”

He barked a laugh. “You would say that, you cheeky bitch,” he said, shaking her head at her nerve. “And what makes you think I’d come along all meek and pliable-”

She was already laughing at herself. “And of course he’d be kicking and screaming the whole time, even with sex on offer. Doesn’t do anything that’s not on his terms, that one.”

He grunted at her retraction, placated at least for now. 

“Ah, fuck it. I miss the old bastard something fierce. That’s just between you and me, though, camera. We don’t want to go giving him a swollen head or anything.”

“If you’re worried about stuff swelling up, sweetheart, that boat’s already sailed.” How the fuck had she not thought this would be found and passed on? And that raised the question- who exactly was his _friend_ sending him the vids in the first place? Was it Shepard herself? Someone in Alliance who was on her side- now wouldn’t that be a novelty?

She heaved a sigh, a hint of melancholy creeping back into her voice. “I guess I should try and get some sleep. It’s just... hard.”

“You can cut the shit with the innuendo anytime,” he muttered.

“It’s nearly impossible to sleep here. It’s so goddamn quiet. I mean, it’s loud, I’m in a goddamn city, but I just...” She trailed off on a laugh, her mood still introspective. “I don’t even know how to explain it.”

The sadness in her voice was inescapable now, and his fingers twitched with the need to trace the patterns her scars left on her skin. 

“You know,” she said softly, “I’ve never actually spent that much time on Earth before? Well, there was some official stuff for the Alliance and what not, and of course there was the training in Rio, but... I’ve been on the ground for three weeks now. I wasn’t born here, I probably would’ve never come here if it weren’t for the attack on Mindoir all those years ago.”

She rolled over onto her back, staring at the roof.

“I’ve spent so many years jumping from ship to ship that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have solid ground beneath my feet. What it’s like to like to leave a window open at night. There’s no faint hum of the engines, that quiet sensation that you can feel rumbling up through your feet when you walk around barefoot.”

She’d done that often enough back when they’d still been flying together- her legs bare, her hair down, one of his shirts swimming on her as she wandered about the captain’s cabin reading over a thousand urgent reports. 

He’d enjoyed distracting her from those reports. 

“The Normandy was pretty quiet, but...” She turned her head, facing back towards the screen again. There was a look in her eyes that made his chest feel tight. “You don’t realise how much you rely on those small noises in the background, the sounds and sensations that don’t really mean anything at the time, but remind you that you’re hiding away in a fragile little skin of metal careening between the stars. And then when you don’t have those sounds, the night can seem pretty long in comparison.”

Goddamn it. Elise fucking Shepard was baring her soul to him and he was sitting on a stained old couch with his cock out, spying on her. 

“And then, when the night is long and you don’t have anyone to share it with and make it go by faster, it’s a lot more...”

She trailed off again, and she didn’t continue. The look in her eyes was enough to have him reaching for the screen once more.

“Chin up, girl,” he said, his fingers touching the screen and tracing the line of her cheek. 

She stared at the screen for a good long while, long enough to have him wondering if maybe he hadn’t been duped after all and the clever little bitch was running a live feed to him after all. Her heart was in her eyes, every word she was too proud to say but couldn’t deny, and he felt uncomfortable frustration bubbling up within him at that look. He couldn’t fix that look, probably couldn’t even do a damn thing about it even if he’d been sitting beside her. But he knew he wanted to hold her fiercely and he wanted that look gone. 

Instead he was halfway around the galaxy from her, with a million worlds or more in between them. 

She reached over and turned off the camera, the video timer running to an end once more. He couldn’t say before- bad quality of the vid and what not- but she might have had tears in her eyes at the end. 

Fucking fabulous. 

He smeared his hand over his face, rubbing tiredly at his good eye. What the fuck was he even supposed to do with that?

He flicked back out to the main screen and looked over the message again. It was short and to the point, and there were at least another twenty files attached, spanning a two and a half week period. 

Zaeed glanced at the time, and shrugged.

“Not like I got anywhere else to be tomorrow,” he muttered to himself, and hit play on the next one.


	2. Chapter 2

**2186:02:17**

**11:50**

**[RECORDING]**

“-light’s on now.”

Zaeed blinked at the glare from the screen; she was bloody well right about one thing, the light was definitely on now. Didn’t matter that she was talking about her stupid camera. The sunlight streaming in through the windows was so bright that the figure in front of the screen was nothing but a dark blob, the glare bad enough that for a moment everything was washed out. 

“The light was on last time, Commander,” came a male voice, the amused drawl enough to make him sit up and pay attention. Whoever this jackass was, he was familiar with Shepard, enough to feel comfortable with her. 

Hadn’t she said in the previous videos that she didn’t have any friends?

“The light _lies_ , James. It _lies_.” Despite feeling pissy at the the little shit keeping her company, he couldn’t help but laugh at the mock outrage in her voice. She was a troublemaker, she was, and he could just about see the fake scandal on her face and the laughter in her eyes. At least she still had her sense of humour. “Just like that devilish Commander Shepard- or haven’t you been reading the news bulletins?”

The camera slowly adjusted to the light and some of the features of the room slowly resolved themselves to be something other than black blobs. The other speaker, the young buck with the overfamiliarity issues, was the target of her camera today, and while he didn’t seem particularly thrilled with the idea, there was an air of resigned amusement about him at her antics. 

He could relate to that. 

“You shouldn’t say those things about yourself, ma’am.” Jesus, he was a piddling toddler. The ink was impressive, but fuck... looking at the kid keeping her company, Zaeed couldn’t help but feel his age in comparison. 

The camera lurched abruptly, spinning about to face Shepard- an absurd closeup of Shepard, mind. The thin white line on her face, a scar that ran from her forehead down to her right eye- a souvenir from a shrapnel bomb during the Mindoir attack, she’d told him- took up centre stage, her eyes ridiculously close to the screen. Long lashes framed familiar brown eyes that were crinkled with laughter at the edges. He knew that look; it made his chest tighten. “James here is ever so polite and has no strong feelings one way or the other about my status as a soon to be convicted war criminal.”

“That’s not true, ma’am-”

“See! Look how polite he is!” There was glee in her eyes, the sort of mischief he remembered well. He almost felt sorry for the little shit. “Lieutenant Vega here is my _military liaison_ \- which is a fancy way of saying he is my gaoler and makes sure I neither run away nor get shot by angry fans. Say hi, James.”

The camera spun about again- jesus, she was gonna make him sick at this rate- to face the hapless Lieutenant Vega. He had that sort of helpless, deer-in-the-headlights sort of look on his face that made Zaeed bark out a laugh. Little Elise had that effect on people. 

“Uh, hi? Commander, you know you’re not supposed to make contact with anyone beyond the base, or make records-”

She tsked him loudly, pressing the camera uncomfortably close to his face. Zaeed grimaced- he wasn’t really that keen on getting up close and personal with the kid. “Aww, c’mon Vega, you gonna deny an old lady veteran her only entertainment while she’s cooped up with clipped wings?”

“With all due respect ma’am, you aren’t an old lady...”

“Smartest thing that’s come out of your mouth so far, boy,” Zaeed muttered. 

“Oh, you would say something like that, you little-”

The timer ran out. 

Sighing, Zaeed dragged the video back a few seconds just to check that he hadn’t missed anything. The same scene played out, with the video stopping just as abruptly halfway through her sentence. 

“Learn to use a camera, sweetheart,” he said, setting the datapad on the couch and levering himself to his feet. “Saviour of the fucking universe and you can’t even work a junkshop cam.”

He kicked the mess on the floor out of his way as he made his way to the shitty excuse for a bathroom the tiny apartment had. He easily could have afforded something else with the fee Cerberus had grudgingly parted with when he’d agreed to helping Shepard in the first place all those months ago, but he’d been living simply for so long now that it seemed a bit pointless to splurge now. 

What the fuck was he gonna do with a big empty house, anyway?

He let the water run in the sink while he cleaned himself up properly, flushing the soiled napkin down the toilet and tucking his cock back into his pants. Rinsing his hands under the now warm water, he grimaced as he caught sight of his reflection in the rusted mirror. Three days worth of growth on his face didn’t exactly do him any favours, and he probably hadn’t had a shower in as many days. He ran a hand over his chin, taking in the dark shadows under his eyes as well. 

Granted, he hadn’t really been all that interested in self management or hygiene in the last month or so; self preservation had never been high on his list of matters of pressing urgency anyway. These last couple of weeks were somewhat a haze of anger and frustration and- interestingly- grief. He’d lost his chance to get Vido, and put to bed the consuming rage he’d felt at the betrayal of his old comrade. To have his chance for vengeance, a moment of violence decades in the making, snatched away by a fucking girl scout with a mean right hook was so goddamn infuriating and humiliating that it was a miracle he hadn’t had an aneurysm right there on the helipad. 

And he’d been stupid enough to let that same broad into his bed afterwards, even after swearing he’d never be taken in by a pretty face again after what happened with that asari bitch all those years ago. Shepard had come knocking with a smirk and an offer no sane man would be able to turn down, and somehow from there he’d found himself spending more and more time in her company- and her bed- and growing more and more incensed on her behalf as she weathered each blow life threw at her and smiled wearily instead of complaining.

He’d never believed he was capable of feeling anything that could eclipse his desire to see Vido cut slowly into small pieces and fed to a pit of ravenous varren. But the clawing emptiness he felt in his chest, a scourge that had been growing ever since she’d bitten her tongue and flown off into the waiting arms of Alliance Internal Affairs with nary a peep of protest, was reaching a point that it might be able to rival it. He sure as hell wasn’t stupid enough to call it love, but it felt a lot like grief, and it felt a lot like Elise Shepard had wormed her sneaky little way into his head in a way he’d never anticipated. 

He was no closer to getting Vido than he had been for the last twenty years and now he had Cerberus after him as well, he was doing work that was making his younger self cringe in second hand embarrassment because somewhere in the last few months he’d developed the beginnings of a conscience, and he was mooning over a woman. And not just any woman- Commander fucking Shepard, saviour of the whole fucking galaxy and all round decent broad. 

He had no idea why she was wasting her time with a wasted wreck of a man like him, but he had reached the point where he hoped to god she never came to her senses. 

Realising he’d been staring at his reflection, lost in morose thoughts like some puppy-eyed whelp, he scowled and slapped up a handful of water, splashing it on his face and scrubbing roughly at his eyes. He turned off the tap, grabbing at the ragged excuse for a towel that lay on the floor nearby and slinging it around his neck. 

The apartment was slowly responding to his movements, the lights in the main room glowing dimly as if assuming it was time to arise for the day. Muttering under his breath about presumptuous AI systems, he searched through the mess on the kitchen bench for the remote sensor pad to the lights. Dimming the lights back down to the lowest setting, he stumbled back over to the couch that doubled as his bed, the datapad still glowing cheerily on the worn cushions. 

“If you’ve been taking more footage of the inside of your toy boy’s nose, sweetheart, you’ll not be keeping my interest for long,” he grumbled, settling back on the couch and picking the datapad up again. “Learn to use a fucking camera.” 

**2186:02:17**

**15:13**

**[RECORDING]**

The camera was stationary for once, sitting on what looked like a low table and angled up towards her as she slumped in a plush looking chair. There were lines around her eyes, tension around her mouth that frustrated him more than he wanted to admit. He couldn’t do anything to fix it, but he couldn’t not notice it either. 

Her fingers were drumming restlessly on the arms of the chair and she was silent for a few long moments; he began to wonder if she realised the camera was on at all. 

“Apparently,” she said abruptly, breaking the silence but not the tension, “it’s a political faux pas to point out that the batarians attempted to destroy Terra Nova years ago with an asteroid when one is on trial for destroying a batarian colony with an asteroid.”

It took a beat for the ramifications of her words to sink in, and then he burst into laughter. “God fucking damn, sweetheart, you never did pull your punches.” 

She continued to drum against the chair, her lips twitching a half dozen times as if she wanted to speak and thought better of it before the words escaped. She was pale, clearly stressed- the pale pink of the scar over her right eye didn’t stand out quite as sharply against her normally bronze skin. 

“I’ve been advised not to express such sentiments when we next meet with the batarian ambassador,” she finally continued, bitterness swamping her tone, “and that my status as a Spectre is not necessarily a protection or an excuse for my actions.”

She laughed once, but there was no joy in it. “You forget, sometimes, what it’s like to have people who support you and believe you. I mean, I know the Alliance are doing everything they can to defend me, and I know that my history with the batarians doesn’t look good, but... god, to just wake up everyday on the Normandy and have people there who gave a shit about what you were doing and gave you their heart and soul doing their best to help you achieve that goal...”

He shifted uncomfortably. “Goddamn it, Shepard, if every second one of these is you in tears, you’re gonna goad me to do a smash and grab to get you out of that shithole.”

She stared off into the distance for a good long while, her eyes glistening with the threatened tears, but she didn’t let them fall. After a time she laughed shakily and dashed them away with the back of her hand, coming back to the present with a bit of a lurch. Clearly the meetings of the day had gone exceedingly badly.

“They’ve done a lot of digging in preparation for the trial, and they’ve been using my real name on all the legal forms and it’s a bit... jarring.”

That made him sit up and pay attention. “You keeping secrets from me, sweetheart?”

She chewed on her lip for a moment, her hesitation almost frustrating, before she exhaled loudly through her nose and shook her head. “Elizá Devinka Szczepanski,” she said ruefully, then groaned loudly and covered her face with her hands. “Fuck I hate that name.”

He had to laugh. “I can see why!” he said, unable to stop himself from grinning at the pained look on her face. “Little bit fancy for a spitfire like you.”

“I haven’t used that name since I was eleven,” she continued with a grimace. “When my father fucked off, I wasn’t really interested in keeping his name. Mother let me drop Elizá and we had my name anglicised in the colony archives to be Shepard and so until the slavers came, I was just Devinka. When the Alliance rescued me, the only name they had on record was Elizá, but...”

She trailed off, chewing on the edge of a fingernail. “I threw a fit and cried and wouldn’t answer to it, and they figured it was just the trauma of the attack.” She laughed once, bitterly. “They probably weren’t wrong, looking back. But I wouldn’t answer to Elizá, until someone read the form wrong and called me Elise. And that... didn’t hurt so much.”

She sighed and tucked her feet up onto the chair with her. Her body language was closed, cautious and vulnerable. Even when he’d seen her at her worst during the fight against the Collectors, she hadn’t looked like this. Small. Dejected. This wasn’t the woman who had dropped him to his knees with a single punch back on Zorya, and it made his blood seethe in his veins seeing her armour slowly chipped away piece by piece with no chance for her to regroup and recover. 

He wanted to hold her, and see her smile with mischief and delight. He wanted to watch the brutal satisfaction on her face when she gunned down an enemy, and feel a perverse sort of lust watching her handle a pistol like she was working a much more intimate item. He wanted to put the fire back in her- he’d even let her get the first punch in, if it’d help. But to see her alone and friendless like this was like some fresh kind of torture, a new sort of pain that he had no defences against. 

“And so Elizá Devinka Szczepanski died, as did Devinka Shepard- and Elise Shepard rose out of the ashes of her home and the ruins of her family, to wreak havoc on the galaxy with her morose and melodramatic backstory,” she said grandiosely, her finger still pressed against her lip and her eyes still staring off into the distance. “Except now they’ve dragged that stupid name out of the pit it was buried in and it makes me want to stab them in the face whenever they mangle the pronunciation.”

He barked out a laugh. “There’s my girl.”

“And, there’s a little light flashing on the front of the camera that I suspect is probably the battery warning, so I think we’ll end this on my explicit threats to cause bodily harm to the fine Alliance staff,” she said, grinning despite herself. “So until next time, faithful listeners of Shepard FM, I shall bid you goodbye.”

She leaned forward to deactivate the camera, and for a moment he got a good view of her tits and the way the military tee she wore clung to her curves. Then the timer ran to an end, and he was left to absorb the information in this newest clip. 

He slouched back against the couch and stared at the ceiling, the datapad sitting loose on his lap. He’d known vaguely that she had a bad history with the batarians, and colony raids were hardly an unusual occurrence. She’d hinted enough, bragged about the scar, and some of her older crewmates had said things in passing that implied they had a better idea of the bigger picture than he did. It wasn’t hard to piece together things from there and make assumptions, but somehow, hearing it confirmed and hearing her voice crack when she tried to speak her real name-

He scowled at himself and ran his hands over his head, linking his fingers behind his neck. Like a name meant anything- she’d picked Elise, she’d picked Shepard. Unless she told him otherwise, she was Elise Shepard to him. 

“You’re a fucking tease, you know that?” he growled, picking up the datapad again. “Lure me in with half naked vids and sex and then you fucking shoot me in the kneecaps so I can’t run and bombard me with this bullshit.” 

She was turning him into a territorial buck- if he didn’t watch himself he’d be snapping at every idiot who smiled at her, and crashing a ship into the side of Alliance HQ to retrieve her. And then he could tell her that he didn’t care what bloody name she used, as long as she let him use it when he murmured to her in the middle of the night.

He was going fucking soft. 

He sighed, and scrolled down to the next video file.


	3. Chapter 3

**2186:02:18**

**07:27**

**[RECORDING]**

“-fucking _bullshit_ ,” Elise snarled as the video began abruptly, the visual feed showing the camera lying on its side. She was only partially in view, and he tilted his head with a frown to try and get a better look at the scene. By his best guess, the camera had been turned on by accident, a suspicion that was confirmed when she came back into view with what looked like a cushion in hand, snarling as she hurled it violently across the room. 

“Yo saan bakwash ho, _ma chik na_ chack-”

She kept pacing, the words bubbling out of her faster and faster, angrier and angrier. And they didn’t mean a bloody thing to him.

“Of course the fucking camera doesn’t have a translator,” he muttered, pausing the video and flicking it back a few seconds. He pulled his omni-tool off the open crate of incendiary bullets nearby and clicked on the translate function, pulling it over his wrist as he hit play again on the video.

There was a brief delay between the movement of her lips and the actual audio of her words, and he was laughing before she’d even finished a full sentence. 

“This is madness, _mother-fucking_ assholes think they can fucking well buy me off?”

He had to chuckle. “Goddamn, sweetheart, you’ve got a mouth on you.”

She continued ranting, her lips still out of synch with the sound of her voice. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just set fire to the whole fucking lot of them and-”

Another voice, an unfamiliar male voice, attempted to interrupt. “Commander-”

“Don’t you _Commander_ me!” she snarled, reverting back to English instantly and storming off screen, apparently in the direction of the other speaker. He didn’t recognise the voice at all, not that that really narrowed the list down at all. “Who the fuck even agreed to speak to them?”

“They approached the Alliance through the formal channels, Commander. I assure you, there was no sinister, underhanded deal going-” 

“I don’t care if it was approved by the fucking President himself, I’m not interested in Terra Firma or their racist fucking bullshit,” she snapped, all but shouting the words. “So they can take their fucking fancy lawyer and get the fuck out-”

“ _Commander_. You’ve a right to be angry, but please- watch your tone. Your concerns are duly noted, but ill-founded. The representatives from Terra Firma were very strongly discouraged from pursuing such a course of action; we politely let them know that you were already represented by the Alliance legal team. We would not risk the political storm that could erupt from allowing such a controversial group to become involved in this issue.”

She paced back into view, her hands linked behind her neck. “Then why did you give me a fucking aneurysm by even telling me it’d been on the table? With respect, _sir_.”

The way she spat the title let him know just how little she meant the offer of respect to the stranger off screen. 

The man in question sighed wearily. “We wanted you to be fully appraised of the situation, since it’s bound to be a point of contention at the next round of negotiations with the batarian ambassador. Saracino wasn’t precisely circumspect- Terra Firma held a press conference last night announcing the offer.”

She wasn’t facing the speaker, her face angled towards the camera, and Zaeed saw the way her expression crumpled slightly at the news. The way her eyes closed, crinkling at the edges almost as if she was wincing in pain; the soft sigh that passed her lips, a sound he had no chance of hearing with the poor quality of the vid but could picture perfectly in his head. The hint of horrified resignation that settled over her as her chin dropped towards her chest.

He felt an awkward sort of ache in his chest, a tightening around his ribs that made him shift uncomfortably on the couch and clear his throat to ease the pressure. That defeated look of hers was worse than any goddamn puppy eyes she’d ever tried on him for shits and giggles; the sadness was wearing away at her more with each video he stupidly hit play on.

And to be fair, it was starting to wear away at him too. It was an uncomfortable thing, to admit that he didn’t like feeling so affected by her moods, to know that he was so bloody affected by her moods in the first place, even if all he had to go on was a cheap as piss camera feed a few weeks old. He couldn’t even remember the last time he’d felt so twisted up about someone other than himself.

He wasn’t stupid enough to call it love, because mad old bounty hunters didn’t fall in love with sexy, morally upstanding warrior women, but fuck it all if he didn’t rage at how powerless he felt in the face of her confinement. At how ridiculous it was to not be able to reach out and pull the poor lass into his arms and just giving her a fucking hug, for gods sake. If anyone had a need for basic human contact and support, it was her. 

“Fantastic,” she said finally, the fire gone from her voice, if not the venom. “So the whole galaxy knows that the Batarian Butcher has a group of xenophobes chomping at the bit to run to her defence. Fucking _fantastic_.”

Zaeed couldn’t find it in him to find the name that bad. He’d never been a fan of the four-eyed fuckers anyway- some of them were half decent, and one or two had his grudging respect for the fight they’d put up when he’d gone to kill them, but on the whole? Batarian Butcher sounded like something he would’ve come up with. 

But then again he wasn’t a big goddamn hero carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. 

“We’ve done our best to distance you from the offer, but it’s sure to be a sore point in the meeting next week,” the speaker said. 

She snorted out a laugh, her nose crinkling with her amusement. He had the strongest urge to kiss her on the nose, his lips pressed against those creases under she giggled and squirmed and tried to punch him in the kidneys to get some leverage against him. 

He made a mental note to try that next time he saw her again.

 _If_ he saw her again.

“I’m surprised they haven’t been beating down the doors howling for my blood already,” she said sarcastically, a little bit of the tension lifting from her shoulders. She began to turn back to the other speaker, dropping her arms away from her neck, when her eyes fell on the camera.

She froze, a look of panic on her face. A flash of guilt flickered through him, before he realised that he wasn’t _actually_ sitting in the room eavesdropping. Well, he _was_ eavesdropping, but that wasn’t any fault of his. She’d been the one to record it, and someone else had sent it to him- who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth?

The way she slunk over to the camera was so ridiculously overdone that he had to laugh; she’d never make it as an undercover agent. She couldn’t keep a straight face to save her life- no wonder she and Kasumi had ended up shooting their way out of that fancy party of theirs. 

“There was a suggestion that we could offer them Saracino as a peace offering to do whatever they wanted,” her companion said with a chuckle. 

The panic in her eyes surged again as she reached casually for the camera. “Strictly off the record, I hope?” she said, her voice a little strained. Before the conversation could continue, the video ran to a stop, her hand blocking half the frame. 

“Subtle, Shepard,” he said, flicking back to the main screen. The next video file had a timestamp only a few minutes later. He clicked it, half expecting to see her being led away in cuffs or hastily trying to stuff the body of her guest under the couch after being caught with the recording of such a politically volatile conversation. 

**2186:02:18**

**07:51**

**[RECORDING]**

The camera flickered to life, close on on her face. The colour balance was off again, the reds too high again, but at least it was upright this time. Her expression was bleak, the happiness gone from her eyes. 

“We’re just gonna pretend that last video didn’t happen, okay?” she said quietly. The tension was around her eyes again, little creases that hadn’t been there six or seven months ago when she was still a freshly minted Cerberus original. She looked tired, and there was something hollow in the way she spoke. 

No dead bodies in what he could see of the background. That was probably a good sign, at least. 

She huffed a breath upwards at her fringe, trying to blow it out of her eyes yet again. His fingers twitched instantly. At what point precisely had that become a habit? How quickly had the shape of him changed to fit in beside her, so that something so simple, so small, could rouse a response in him every time without fail? How many times had she done it while they were in the shuttle, her foot tapping irritably as she stared out the window waiting for drop off, and how many times had he reached over and pushed the fringe out of her eyes for her? Cuffing her gently on the chin when she scowled at him, colour in her cheeks, while whoever it was tagging along with them rolled their eyes and grinned. 

She had changed him; she was under his skin, she was familiar and comfortable and the sudden acknowledgement of that fact was so staggering, a violent lurch that skewed his entire being, that he had to stop the vid and set the datapad down on the couch. 

Elise fucking Shepard, big goddamn hero and awkward little girl scout, scar on his heart and fever in his blood. He hadn’t wanted her there, and he didn’t know how long she’d been there; and really, what business did an old merc like him have chasing after a broad like Shepard anyway? So what if he knew when her smile meant someone was about to die, or when she needed distracting from her own thoughts? So what if he knew which sigh meant she was pissed off and which one meant she was just frustrated? 

“Dream on, you stupid old bastard,” he grumbled, standing up and heading to the filthy kitchenette on the far wall. There were plenty of empty bottles, and an ashtray overflowing with cigar stubs; there was a box of flash grenades lying in the sink- he didn’t remember putting them there. Ignoring the ache in his chest as her laugh echoed in his ears, he dug through the mess until he found a bottle of whiskey that was still half full. Grunting in satisfaction, he took a swig and wandered back towards the couch, staring down at the datapad and her frozen expression on the screen. 

It wasn’t that late; if he wanted to, he could head out and find a bar open and chances are he’d find himself a couple of batarians. He could start a fight, get the adrenalin going, get bloodied up and jacked up on pain. He could find the local Terra Firma office in this sector, see if they had one within a few hours of him. He could pay them a visit, maybe rattle a few teeth, make sure they knew their attentions weren’t appreciated. 

And maybe he could hop a freighter bound for earth, see for himself precisely how well fortified Alliance HQ was. 

“Fucking old fool,” he muttered to himself, dropping heavily back onto the couch and taking another long drink from the bottle. The whiskey burned pleasantly, a buzz in his veins; it was just the right distraction that he needed. 

It wasn’t the distraction he _wanted_ , which involved the taste of Elise alongside the whiskey and the sound of her panting softly beside his ear. 

He sighed and scrubbed at his face with his free hand. Stubble scratched at his palm; his scars ached. He felt his age, more keenly than he had in a long time. 

Picking up the datapad again, he tapped the screen for it to start playing again. 

She unfroze, her fringe settling back into place over her face. “I don’t... I don’t really want to delete it,” she continued, somewhat miserably, “because I’m not ever gonna be ashamed of my opinions, I’m not ever gonna let myself be censored, but I don’t really think that the Alliance will take kindly to me broadcasting a discussion like that all over the net.”

“Keep ‘em on their toes at least,” he pointed out, beyond the point of caring that he was talking to a weeks old recording. 

“I just...” She laughed, once, but it sounded a bit more like a sob. There were tears in her eyes when she looked back to the camera. “I don’t _like_ batarians- I’ve never made that a secret. And I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve had bad dealings with them.”

She made the sound again, and it sounded most definitely like she was crying. Her hand dashed against her cheek quickly, brushing away the tears that had gathered. “But I would _never_ kill an entire world of people, an entire colony with children and mothers and- and the knowledge that people _approve_ of their deaths and _celebrate_ what I did is just-”

She covered her face with her hands, drooping forward as if she carried the weight of the galaxy on her shoulders. And in a way, she did. 

He set the datapad down for the second time, climbed to his feet, and threw the whiskey bottle against the far wall with a wordless roar. It shattered, glass and alcohol spraying the room, but it was not enough to satisfy him. He hadn’t paused the video, and when he heard her crying it sent him into a rage the likes of which he had not felt since she had punched him and denied him his vengeance against Vido. 

He kicked at the mess on the floor; the boxes of ammo crunched and splintered under his bare feet, bullets scattering everywhere. He punched at the wall until fracture lines spiralled outwards and bloodied plaster rained to the ground. Everything was a wild seething mess, his rage a madness, a fire that only pain and violence could sate. 

The sounds of her tears echoed through his brain long after the video had stopped. 

He had no idea how much time had passed by the time he had reined himself in, his chest heaving and his pulse hammering wildly, each breath rasping painfully past his lips as blood dripped from his torn knuckles and onto the floor. The apartment looked like a pack of varren had torn through it, and as bad as it had already looked an hour ago, that was saying something. At least nobody had come to investigate the noise- the benefits of bedding down in the shitty end of town. He grimaced and flexed his hands, a fierce ache shooting up his arms at the movement. 

Kicking his way clear of the mess, he staggered over to the bathroom for the second time that night, grunting irritably when he spotted his reflection in the mirror. There was blood and dust on his face and in his hair, with a cut on his collarbone that must have been from a piece of flying glass. He nudged on the tap, wincing and swearing under his breath as the water washed over the wounds on his hands, stinging as it tugged at the ruined skin. 

The water soon ran red into the drain, flecked with grit and dust. He scrubbed a cloth roughly over the wounds, trying to get the last of the dirt out of his flesh; he had medi-gel somewhere in the apartment, but fuck if he knew where. Given how thoroughly he’d just rearranged everything, he didn’t fancy his chances of finding it quickly. Didn’t give a shit, though, really. The pain was good, a sharp distraction from the violence of his thoughts. 

He’d left the towel out in the main room, so he wiped his hands on his pants to dry them and stumbled back out. Now that the adrenalin was wearing away he felt exhausted, and he slumped back onto the couch; he nearly fell asleep again, despite the ache in his hands. 

Fumbling behind him for the datapad, he hesitated over the video, debating whether he had it in him to watch it in its entirety. Seeing just the start of it had sent him into an uncontrollable fury. In a way, he felt like he owed it to her- she’d gone to the trouble of recording it, after all. But then, she hadn’t intended for anyone to ever see them; she certainly hadn’t expected the files to land in his lap. 

He wasn’t cut out for all this emotional shit, anyway. Give him a target, something to shoot, a face to pummel until there was blood and spittle and teeth flying about. Give him a broad ready for some fun and not looking for much else, and he’d be happy. He’d always been happy that way; simple needs, simple things to lust for. Watching Elise get ground underfoot for the sake of political discourse was not simple, and neither was the ferocity of his desire to hurt the people hurting her. She was Commander fucking Shepard, spectre and goddamn queen of the universe- she’d just about punched a reaper to death with her bare hands, then she’d died and come back just to do it again. 

He couldn’t think of a person less in need of a champion than her, and it was laughable that he was even thinking of himself in such a capacity. 

But he felt like a coward when he flicked away from the video and back to the full list of files.

There was nothing else with a timestamp from that day, and his stomach seethed uncomfortably from the knowledge that he was possibly ignoring something important by not finishing the last video. But he was alone in the night, and she wasn’t here to tease him for his cowardice or distract him from the tumult in his head and his heart. 

Maybe he owed it to her, but he was happy enough being a lonely old coward hiding in the dark for now. Rubbing tiredly at the corner of his mouth, trying to ignore the way his bones ached and his scars throbbed, he clicked on a new file.

“Please for the love of god don’t be more tears,” he muttered. 

**2186:02:19**

**21:59**

**[RECORDING]**

Her face loomed large in the camera screen, and she made a gleeful noise when she noticed the recording had begun. The difference in mood from the last video was so marked that he was slightly taken aback; hard to do a one-eighty on the rage and frustration that was still simmering beneath the surface. But she was smiling and happy, and the joy on her face made his heart lurch about in response. 

Her eyes had a glazed sheen to them that he recognised from the night she’d come back from that heist with Kasumi, her adrenalin high from the gunfight and her lips tasting of the wine she’d drunk at the party beforehand. 

That was the first night that she’d called him back to the privacy of her cabin on the Normandy, the first sign that she was a little more interested in him than as a casual fuck. Something had rattled her bad during that party, not that he’d been complaining when her response to it was to ride him hard until the small hours of the morning. 

She’d never mentioned anything that could have thrown her off that bad, and he’d never asked. They’d never been the sort of people to have emotional heart to hearts and meaningful conversation. It’d just been a bit of fun, a way to ease the stress when chasing monsters all day long got a bit too much to bear. He suspected now that perhaps they’d accidentally progressed past that, beyond casual sex and one-upmanship on the battlefield, but he wasn’t really in the mood to dwell on that possibility right now. 

And she had that same look again, half tipsy and giddy enough to be stupid. There was a flush to her cheeks as she set the camera down on the table with exaggerated care and slid backwards into the plush chair. 

She giggled again, her hand rubbing at her face. “Hellooo, camera,” she said, in a sing song voice. 

Zaeed barked out a laugh, relief washing through him. “Jesus christ, you’re off your face sweetheart.” Had he ever seen her giggle before? Not that he could remember. There was something adorably girlish about her, from the way she tucked herself into the couch, feet bare, to the way her hand kept going up to her hair to fiddle and play. She was bubbly in a way he couldn’t say he’d ever seen from her; he knew without a doubt that, were she sitting beside him in that moment, she’d be almost ridiculously cuddly and handsy, caught somewhere between the desire to crawl into his lap or cop a feel. 

And he didn’t know how he knew that about her, simply that he did. It brought a smile to his face, seeing her relaxed and drunk and giggly, and he felt a pang of regret that he’d not had more opportunities to see her like this in person. 

He made another mental note, alongside the reminder to kiss her on the nose- clearly a stupid drunken romp was in order, because the thought of her giggling and shrieking girlishly as he kissed his way from her toes to her head suddenly seemed ridiculously appealing. 

She leaned forward, beckoning to the camera as if expecting it to come closer. “I have a secret or two for you,” she said in an exaggerated whisper, giggling yet again. 

He chuckled and allowed himself to relax. “Well don’t keep me in suspense then, sweetheart,” he said, beyond caring that she couldn’t hear him.

“Do you know,” she whispered to the camera conspiratorially, “how hard it is to say Zaeed when you’re about to come?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Elise has the colonist background with the war hero service record, so while she wasn't named the Butcher of Torfan, she has enough bad blood with the batarians to warrant the title of Batarian Butcher after the events of Arrival. The name was allegedly coined by an asari journalist, and since then has gone viral, adopted by a number of major news outlets across the galaxy.
> 
> Additionally, Elise's mother was originally from Nepal before moving to Mindoir with family. Elise is fluent in English, Hindi and Nepali and the language she is speaking in the chapter is Nepali.


	4. Chapter 4

He probably should have expected her to go straight for the kill like that, but he hadn’t; she’d lulled him into a false sense of security with her laughter and her drunken teasing. At her whispered query he sucked in a breath, his cock perking up instantly. “That ain’t precisely fair play, sweetheart,” he growled, running a hand over his face as she giggled and bit at her lip in an all too alluring manner.

He wanted to be the one biting her lip, for fuck’s sake.

“It is a completely impossible name to say when you are in the throes of an orgasm,” she said matter-of-factly, waggling her finger at the camera as if to emphasize her point. She shimmied backwards in the seat, stretching her arms up over her head and arching her back; his blood surged in his veins as she murmured some wordless sound, stretching like a cat. There was a tiny smile curling at the corner of her mouth, smugly satisfied, far too pleased with herself. “So I must simply sigh and moan in his ear and hope that he never notices.”

“I’ll fucking well notice next time, you goddamn minx,” he snarled, already frustrated beyond belief at her teasing and her coquettishness. There was no way in hell she hadn’t intended for this to be found. There was not a goddamn fucking shred of doubt in his mind that she’d set all of this up, done this for him- a private peep show, a window into her soul that sometimes showed him her broken edges and sometimes showed him the fire in her heart. “Next time I’ll tie you to the bed and you won’t fucking be getting back up again until you’ve screamed yourself hoarse.”

“He’s usually far too preoccupied to notice, anyway,” she continued, her grin positively wicked. “He’s too busy trying to- in his words- ‘ _tame himself a hellion_ ’.”

She made a poor attempt at his accent, her voice dropping an octave as she made a scowl that was obviously supposed to mimic him. She barely finished the sentence, bursting into new laughter and rolling back in the seat, the angle enough for him to see that while she was wearing a shirt, she most definitely was not wearing pants. A glimpse of brown skin, all curves and temptation, and he was hard as a rock again.

Fuck, he couldn’t remember ever being so wrapped up in one woman before. With her laugh and her body and her smile she just had him twisted up so tight that he didn’t know where he ended and she began.

She lolled about in the chair as she laughed, hooking one of her legs over the armrest and he bit the inside of his cheek at the surge of lust that swamped him. “Oh gods,” she gasped, wiping tears of mirth away from her face, “I love that grumpy old bastard. He’s-”

He hit pause so hard it was a surprise the datapad screen didn’t fracture.

Her face was frozen in an exaggerated smile, her eyes half closed; it made her look as if she was stoned as well as drunk. But she still looked bloody beautiful, stupid expression and all. 

He clenched his hand into a fist until the torn skin ached, fresh blood welling on his knuckles, telling himself that the way his hand shook slightly was from exhaustion and alcohol. Not nerves. Not shock. Certainly nothing to do with the way she’d just casually proclaimed that she loved him, as if it were the most normal thing in the world, as if it were something she’d said a hundred times before and would say a hundred times more. 

He set the datapad down and stared at the far wall, his mind surprisingly blank for such a significant revelation. It wasn’t like he’d never said he loved someone before- although, in hindsight, there weren’t really all that many occasions when he’d meant it. Love was something he offered up freely to ever pouting trollop who slid into his lap with a giggle and a coy expression; whenever they whined and sulked and insisted that he wasn’t paying enough attention to them, he’d always assured them that he loved them, that he wanted them.

They barely lasted more than a week or two, at most. They got what they wanted to hear, attention lavished on them for the duration of their liaison, and he got sex and company for a few days. Love, or at least the mimicry of it, was a part of the transaction, and both he and the women who joined him in his bed knew the word was as shallow as a vorcha’s attempts at poetry.

But Elise fucking Shepard, smartass extraordinaire, threw it out in casual conversation, talking to a camera in the middle of the night as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She wasn’t saying it for brownie points, or to lure someone into bed, or placate a petty tantrum. 

Elise Shepard had just said she loved him.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he muttered, dropping his face into his hands. He felt it, the stupid surge of hope in his heart, the misplaced exhilaration he felt at hearing her giggle and mention love like she’d known it for months. And he didn’t have any place clinging to that hope, because he wasn’t the sort of guy that broads like Shepard ended up with. 

He was tired, and he was old. He’d left a trail of blood from one side of the galaxy to the other, a string of ruined lives and violence. He wasn’t the hero in her story- he was the kind of bastard who was relegated to the footnotes of history, a blip on the radar. 

A woman like Shepard couldn’t love an old fool like him.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, an ache settling behind his eyes. He needed sleep, but he had a datapad full of vids of Elise and that trumped sleep right now. 

Picking up the datapad again, he dragged the little cursor back a few clicks and then let it run free. 

“- love that grumpy old bastard.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, the words just as devastating on the second attempt as they’d been the first time. 

_She’s not for you._

“He’s fantastically predictable” she continued, “and he’s a hell of a lot smarter than he wants people to know, and he’s just-” She gestured lewdly, giggling again. “He’s _fantastic_ in bed.” 

Some of the tension eased in his shoulders. “Oh? Could always stand to hear more about that, sweetheart.”

“Like, I remember, there was this one time he had me pinned to the door down near engineering,” she said, a dreamy sort of grin taking over her face, “and I was trying _so hard_ not make a sound because I knew Daniels and Donnelly were right through the wall...”

Fucking hell, he remembered that one too; just the mention of it was enough to have him groaning in frustrated desire. She’d come sauntering down to the bowels of the ship with a come hither look in her eyes and a teasing smirk on her lips, and his blood had still been pumping from the firefight she’d dragged him into an hour earlier. 

She hadn’t resisted when he’d grabbed her and kissed her hard enough to bruise- although she had chuckled tauntingly and made insinuations that some people had no stamina- and he’d felt a ruthless surge of satisfaction when he’d realised she wasn’t wearing underpants beneath her uniform. 

The way she’d wrapped her legs around him, her thighs tight around his hips and her heels digging into his back as he’d slammed into her; the way her head had fallen back against the bulkhead, her lips parted in a silent gasp as she’d panted frantically and moved with him. 

Every whimper she’d let out, every moan she’d tried to bite back, had only served to inflate his ego and drive him further into madness. He’d left marks in her neck with his teeth and she’d left blood trickling down his back from her nails and when she’d choked and sobbed his name, her body squeezing tight around his, he’d never felt such a rush of gleeful satisfaction as he did in that moment. 

His cock throbbed, his balls tight. He reached into his pants, grunting in frustration when he realised what he was about to do. 

Fuck, he didn’t want to jerk off to her memory twice in one night; he wasn’t some horny teenager, for god’s sake. He wanted her here, wanted to drown himself in every sigh and whisper and cry she let out. Instead all he had was the crackle of a bad video file, the colour balance off and the audio hissing softly, her laugh echoing in his ears while he sat in an empty apartment. 

“He was a jerk about that,” she continued, interrupting his fantasies. “Granted, with a performance like that, he earned the right, but gods he was so fucking smug for days afterwards. Bastard walked with a spring in his step and everything- he was _unbearable_.”

“You just said I earned it,” he muttered, his hand still on his cock, undecided. 

“I mean, don’t ever tell him, but it’s a huge fucking turn on when he’s like that.” Her hand was sliding lazily down her leg, and that had to be deliberate. “All wild and controlling and sexy. Stupid old bastard, driving me crazy for him.”

His hand began to move on his cock; no point resisting what felt so good when she was being a tease anyway. “Feeling’s mutual, sweetheart.”

Her hand, by comparison, was meandering up the inside of the thigh hooked over the chair, her fingers dancing ever higher. There was a familiar look on her face, desire sparkling in her eyes and a mischievous smile playing over her lips. For a moment his rhythm faltered, his heart lurching in his chest; he adored that look, the lust and the laughter mingling together, and wasn’t that just typical of her? That was Elise in a nutshell, a smile on her lips and heat in her eyes. 

He wanted to kneel in front of that chair and kiss from her toes upwards, listening to her drunken giggles give way to hoarse whimpers as he buried his face between her thighs. 

She was already stroking herself through her panties, her gaze fixed somewhere offscreen, eyes hooded as her breathing grew ragged. 

“And there’s something I never thought I’d be admitting out loud- Zaeed Massani drives me crazy.” Her eyes closed for a moment and she moaned softly, her hips moving slightly as she pleasured herself; when she opened her eyes again, the fog of lust in her gaze had him swearing under his breath and quickening his own movements. “And not just because he’s a mad old bastard with a death wish and no brain to mouth filter. Although fuck it, if I don’t love that about him too.”

He groaned; she said it so innocently, a throwaway comment, but imagine if she whispered it in the middle of the night, her breath hot against his ear and her body pinned beneath his. Imagine if she said it in the middle of the mess, rolling her eyes at him as she called him love in front of half the crew, her fingers threaded through his. 

He heard her giggle, and that was enough to have him swearing, eyes closed and hips bucking against his hand as he came for the second time that night. “You bloody tease,” he rasped, shuddering as the orgasm tore through him. A halfway dirty video and the sound of her laughter and he was a lost cause, apparently. 

She wasn’t done with him yet, though. 

“There are so many things I love about him,” she said, staring off absently into the distance as she teased at herself; he groaned again, his breathing still uneven as he came down from the high she’d sent him to. “I love all his stupid, over the top stories- god, I must have listened to him talking for hours while I was trying to work out how to get him out of his clothes.”

She shuddered and tipped her head back, her breathing shallow. “And then he had to go and turn out to be fucking interesting and I wanted to hear his stupid stories and I just-”

She broke off on a moan, and her fingers slipped beneath the edge of her underpants, working furiously. “Bloody hell, sweetheart,” he growled, “are you trying to _kill_ me?”

Her answer was a high pitched sob, her body arching in the chair, and the sight of her lost in the throes of passion made his cock perk up again. “For christ’s sake, _enough_.”

She was bloody well going to owe him a good two or three days when she finally got out of that bloody brig; this had to be considered torture, easily. He was a heartbeat away from tearing out of the apartment and down to the spaceport, fudging his way onto a ship bound for earth just to find her. She could take him on mad adventures to find more of her bloody reapers or she could take him to the fucking aquarium on Terra Nova for all he cared- he’d even buy her the stupid novelty hats too. 

Fuck it, he’d buy her the whole fucking aquarium if she asked. Anything, as long as he could do it all at her side and he could do unpleasant things to all the assholes who kept making her cry. 

Oh fuck it all, he _was_ in love with Elise Shepard, in all her smart-assed glory. 

He didn’t know whether to laugh or whether to punch the wall again. 

Panting, she slowly lifted her head again, grinning lazily in the direction of the camera. “Oops,” she said, lolling about bonelessly in the chair. She withdrew her hand from between her legs, wiping her fingers on her shirt before drooping back again. “Probably shouldn’t have been filming that. But that’s a worry for tomorrow when I’m sober.”

He still had his hand over his cock, and as she made a lacklustre attempt to clean herself up, he took his hand out of his pants and grimaced. Looking around, he grabbed the top sheet off an invoice for experimental- and admittedly illegal- armour piercing ammo and used that to wipe his hand clean. Not like he wanted anyone to see the invoice anyway. 

She covered her face and began to shake; it took him a moment of panic to realise that she was laughing again, and when she lost control and began to howl with fits of giggles he let himself relax a little. 

“Oh my fucking gods, I cannot believe I just filmed myself masturbating.” She ran both her hands over her face, and up into her hair, doing that taunting stretch again. “And now knowing my luck it’s going to find its way onto the internet, and I’ll have a whole bunch of pervy old men leering at me and asking for a repeat performance.”

“You bet your fucking ass I’ll be asking for a repeat performance,” he said with a chuckle.

“Well, Zaeed could get one,” she continued, almost reading his mind. “But I don’t think he has the patience to just sit and watch. He much prefers to be an _active_ participant.” 

“Never had you complain yet, you little minx.”

She was still giggling. “He’s so predictable, I love it. Like, for example he does this thing, it’s sort of like a tell- he rubs at his bad eye when he’s frustrated, so I can always tell when something is wrong. I don’t think he even realises he does it.” 

He sat up abruptly, tearing his hand away from where it had been prodding at the ridge of scar tissue beside his nose. “I’d like to see you get shot in the fucking face and not ache when it’s cold out.”

“And I mean, I can hear him now- ‘ _I only touch it when it hurts, it’s not a fucking tell, you smug little bitch_ ’. But he always does it when he’s pissy about something and doesn’t want to talk about it. All men should come with handy hints like that.”

“I’ll give you a hint now sweetheart, you are not leaving the bed for at least a week next time I get my hands on you.”

“There’s other things too. Like the way he doesn’t like to sit with his back to the door, or the way he insists on having the right hand side of the bed.”

He scowled down at the screen. “It’s perfectly logical, I-”

“Or the way he sort of buries his face in my hair, when he thinks I’m asleep, or the way he wakes me up by kissing me just under my ear.” Her hand drifted up to her neck, her fingers brushing over the spot in question, while she smiled and blushed. The abrupt one eighty surprised him, and he felt his heart lurch about at the look on her face. “And he’s always so gentle when he does that, his hand on my belly and little whispers in my ear and I just feel so...”

She shivered, wrapping her arms around herself as her smile widened. “Safe. And loved. If Zaeed Massani was ever capable of loving someone.”

“Ah, shit.” He ran a hand over his face, telling himself that his eyes ached from the lack of sleep and not from any sort of misty eyed emotional bullshit. “If I ever get the chance to love someone, it’ll be you, sweetheart.” 

“Which is awkward given that I’m pretty sure I love him and that certainly wasn’t ever on the cards before now. Not that I’m complaining, mind, but... uh... how do you sidle up to one of the deadliest men in the galaxy and tell him you’d like to have a lot of fun practising making babies with him? And then... maybe some babies as well.”

Unbidden, images of a wild haired little girl sprang to mind, her skin as rich and dark as her mother’s, and a shit-eating grin that could have come from either of them. 

Fuck, next he’d be sighing over picket fences and joining a book club. 

“Although that’s not really the sort of thing that you ever say to a man like Zae-” She was gesturing madly with her hands- too madly, as it turned out, as she shrieked and slid from the chair with a lurching bump. The startled look on her face as she sat gaping on the floor was so ridiculously comical that he couldn’t help himself- he burst out laughing, cackling at the way she blinked in surprise several times and glanced over her shoulder to confirm that she was indeed out of the chair. 

“I think I’ve had a bit more to drink than I originally thought,” she said, planting her hands on the table as she tried to lever herself back to her feet. “Maybe that’s a sign that I should-”

She fell again, this time crashing towards the camera.

The recording stopped just as he heard her swear, the frame stopping on a close up of her arm. 

“You cannot use a camera to save your life, sweetheart,” he chuckled, flicking back to the list of files and selecting the next one down. 

**2186:02:20**

**10:01**

**[RECORDING]**

The camera was in the same position she’d left it in last night, before she’d crashed into it of course, aiming at the same chair, and as it started filming she was in the process of slumping back into the seat. 

Her hair was tied back in some ridiculously messy sort of bun; he had to wonder if she’d done it with her eyes closed, or if she’d slept like that. There were lines around her eyes, and she was wearing a baggy jacket that made her normally muscled frame look quite petite in comparison.. 

She blinked blearily and rubbed at her face, fighting back a yawn. “It occurs to me that I may have said some regrettable things last night, while under the influence of James’ stolen beers.”

His blood turned to ice instantly; he felt a sneer forming as he took in her guilty expression. “Oh, cold feet, Shepard?” he asked, his fingers tightening on the datapad until it was a wonder he didn’t warp it. Fuck, he’d been such a fool- thinking himself in love with a girl like her, thinking she loved him. It was stupidity, plain and simple, and in the harsh light of day she’d realised that, and-

“Zaeed, if you’re watching this at any point in the future, I don’t think your stories are stupid, okay?”

-and the fight went out of him almost instantly, his anger fizzling out to naught and leaving him feeling sheepishly embarrassed instead.

God damn, it was a good thing she wasn’t here to see his face right now. 

“And, I don’t really have a good memory of everything I said last night, but...” She winced. “I’m sorry for saying things about babies. That’s uh... that’s a rather significant bombshell and I’m sure we’ll have time to ignore it when we next see each other. So if you could just disregard my drunken antics, well then... that would just be dandy.”

“Oh well, now I’m gonna have to go back through and catalogue all your loving declarations one by one so that I can bring them up at inconvenient moments and tease the shit out of you, love.”

She was chewing on a strand of hair, and despite looking tired and hungover, she was still fucking adorable. Odd that, to think of an elite soldier and saviour of the galaxy as _cute_ , but there was no other word for it- Elise Shepard was adorable in her flustered, sleepy awkwardness, and he felt himself smiling thinking of the mischief he could cause with her in that state. 

“But,” she said slowly, “I will say that, um... Zaeed, if you’re watching this, and I really hope you are because you’ve been the entire reason I’ve been doing these stupid vids in the first place even if I have no idea how to get them to you... I meant what I said, about...”

She cleared her throat, her eyes crinkling slightly as if she were wincing from a headache. “Wow, this is a lot harder to say when you’re sober. Zaeed, I meant what I said when I said that I might...” She trailed off, her fingers twisting together in her lap as she stared straight into the camera. Straight at _him_. “I think I... love you.”


	5. Chapter 5

Three little words, said with complete sincerity and completely sober. 

Three little words that had the power to upend his entire life. He let out a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding, his heart racing. 

“And I mean, I dunno, that’s probably precisely the wrong thing to say to someone like you,” she said nervously, looking away from the camera, looking down at her lap as if she were suddenly shy, “but I don’t want to give up the chance to say that to you. Given that, you know, at this point I don’t even know if I’ll get the chance to say it to you in person.”

Still reeling from her declaration of love, he had to blink a few times at that. “Come again, sweetheart?”

“I don’t know what’s going to happen to me with the batarians, but I know it’s not going well, per se.” She grimaced. “And I mean, I don’t even know if... gods this is hard to say.”

He frowned, something in her tone warning him. 

She looked back up towards the camera; her heart was in her eyes, and he found himself touching the screen again, a poor mimicry for running his fingers over the soft curve of her cheek, but the real thing wasn’t exactly available to him at the moment. “I don’t really know if you’re gonna be waiting when- if- I get back out. It’s a big galaxy out there, and we never made any promises to each other.”

“Aw, fuck Shepard,” he muttered, “thanks for making a guy feel guilty.” 

“Well, okay, no that’s a lie,” she continued. “I did make one promise to you, and I broke it fairly quickly. I never did let you deal with Vido.”

At the mention of the Blue Suns leader, he felt the familiar rush of anger and loathing, predictable even if it was unwanted in this particular moment. He didn’t want those emotions right now, so contrary to the warmth he was feeling towards Elise and her clumsy attempts to profess her love. 

“Although is it bad of me to admit that I can’t really feel all that sorry about that, because it gave me the nudge towards, well... seducing you.”

He couldn’t help it- he had to laugh, because even despite his lingering anger at Vido, calling what she’d done to him a seduction was so ludicrous that the only appropriate response was to laugh at it. What they’d done that day had been violent and exquisite and had little to do with his idea of seduction- but then he’d always appreciated that about her. She’d never been one for bullshit, never been one to dance around an issue if she could help it. 

“I know that we never really started on the best footing,” she said, smiling at the memory as if she were laughing along with him. “And I know we never really talked about it after that day, but I want you to know that I am really sorry about what happened on Zorya. You deserved a chance to put those demons to rest, and instead I just damn well made it worse for you.”

“Not so much worse,” he countered instantly. “It got me you, and you don’t make me anywhere near as fucking mad as Vido. Come close, though.”

Although mad was the wrong word- she frustrated him and she drove him out of his mind with need; she seemed to have a gift for guessing when he was dwelling on the past too much and had ways of distracting him and dragging a smile to his sorry face. Her decency chafed at him sometimes, mostly out of irritation at the way she made things harder for herself for the sake of doing the right thing.

He felt a lot of things about Elise Shepard, and mad only began to scrape the surface of it all. 

She wasn’t done yet, though. “And you know what, if you haven’t already done it by the time I get out of here...” She hesitated again, and something hard came into her eyes. “ _If_ I get out of here- then I’ll help you. For real this time, we’ll go and we’ll find Vido and you can do whatever the hell you want to him before you kill him.”

Something twisted in his belly at that promise, love and desperation and relief. 

“I mean, I might not be able to stomach it,” she said, laughing softly, the sound cold. “But I’ve done plenty of things I’m not precisely proud of in the past and you never flinched or looked away and I owe you for that.” 

She shook her head sharply, as if something had suddenly clarified in her head. “I _love you_ for that,” she corrected, “because you don’t look at me and see Commander Shepard, paragon of virtue and saviour of the universe.”

“You’d be surprised, love,” he muttered. The word came easier to him than he’d expected.

“You see all the worst bits of me, when I’m a shithead and when I’m not on top of my temper and when I fracture a little under the pressure.” She blew at her fringe, and of course it settled back over her face again instantly. “So I owe it to you to be the same for you. I _want_ to be the same for you, even if you think you don’t need someone like that in your life.” 

“Well you don’t sound like you’re giving me much choice even if I were inclined to say no.”

She blew at her fringe, a sound that was more of an exasperated sigh than anything else. “Ahhh, and this is so _frustrating_ saying all of this to a camera instead of saying it to you,” she said, a hand going up to push her fringe away; she looked tired, and she wasn’t exactly gonna be winning any beauty contests any time soon, what with her scars and her crooked nose, but fuck it if his heart didn’t beat a little faster as he stared at her. 

Elise Shepard loved him, and he had a mad urge to advertise that fact to anyone who would listen, willing or not. Run through the streets, shout everyone in a bar to a drink, grab random passersby and let them know that, yeah, no big deal or anything, but Elise god damn Shepard loved _him_. 

“I’m too old for this shit,” he muttered, but he was smiling, and his foot was tapping impatiently, as if waiting for him to jump up from the couch and start pacing, start planning, trying to work out the best way to get her back in his arms again. 

“And if you were here I’d probably chicken out anyway, or get distracted,” she said moodily, and he had to laugh at the expression on her face, petulant and sulky. “You’re good at distractions.”

“Haven’t had a complaint yet, sweetheart.”

She flopped back in the chair, her head resting on the arm and exposing the curve of her neck, the gorgeous brown skin making his mouth water. “You know,” she said, her voice softer now, “it’s actually sort of funny, but I don’t really know anything about you. At all. There wasn’t even all that much about you in the Shadow Broker files, the one time Liara let me snoop around.”

He laughed at that, the thought of her furtively looking through the massive archives on that ship, casting nervous looks over her shoulder as if she expected him to creep up behind her and catch her in the act. “You could have just asked, love.”

“I don’t know where you were born,” she continued, counting it off on her fingers, “although I’m assuming given your age that you aren’t a colony baby.”

“The fuck you saying ‘bout my age, you sassy bitch? Did you even ask me how old I was or did you just write me off as your fuckin’ grandpa?”

“And I’d sort of wager a guess at England, but...” She trailed off, waving her hand back and forth as if to indicate she wasn’t sold on the idea. “I dunno. And I don’t know if you have any family at all- I don’t mean kids, although given your lifestyle over the last twenty odd years I wouldn’t precisely be surprised if you had a kid or two floating out in the colonies...”

He’d wondered it often enough himself, but he didn’t have an answer for her. Or at least, not one that would sate her curiosity. 

“I don’t know if you had brothers or sisters, I don’t know where you grew up, I don’t know what your favourite subjects were at school.” She laughed, amused. “I do know there were rumours you were a recruit in the Alliance once upon a time, but, well... don’t take this the wrong way love but you really don’t strike me as the type for rules and regulations.”

He smiled at that, her queries dredging up memories so old and faint that he’d all but buried and forgotten them. “Well, you’d be spot on with that assessment, love.”

“You never told me what happened between you and Vido,” she continued, “and I don’t know how you met him in the first place. It feels like there was something between you, and I’m really sorry if I’m misreading the situation, but it feels like the anger you carry with you is a bit too much for a business deal gone south.”

The smile vanished from his face abruptly, and the anger was back tenfold. So she thought he had ghosts, demons that she wanted to drag out into the open? She thought that professing her love abruptly gave her a free pass to poke and pry and dig up the darkness that he’d barely kept a lid on these last twenty years? 

She made a face, rolling her eyes. “And augh, I don’t even have to have him here to know he’d be shitty at me for prying, but you know what? I don’t care. No, wait, I do care, but the other way to what I-” She made a frustrated noise and blew at her fringe. “This is impossible. I _don’t_ care about him being shitty at me, I _do_ care about knowing what happened to him to hurt him so badly. I don’t just mean the scars and shit.” She gestured vaguely to her face, as if to indicate the damage done to his. “It’s obvious that it means a hell of a lot to him, and if it’s important to him, it’s important to me.” 

Zaeed pressed pause again, setting the datapad down on the couch and running both his hands over his face. Her face was frozen in an expression of sincerity and severity- she looked like she did whenever she was getting frustrated with diplomacy and wanted to throw a punch instead. 

Which was often enough, to be honest. She’d even done it to him a time or two. 

He found himself staring down at the datapad, at the look in her eyes, and he scowled and looked away. This whole fucking night was some kind of emotional roller coaster, throwing him from one mood to the next as rapidly as if he were coming down from a bad hit; he’d gone from utter giddy euphoria to violent, consuming anger and back again, hitting every branch on the way down. He felt worn out, exhausted; he wanted to collapse back onto the couch and sleep for three days.

And he wanted to wake up to her beside him again, so he could take out all the frustration and desperate need on her, so he could lavish praise upon her and whisper frantic words of worship against her skin. He wanted to go ten rounds with her and then wash the blood and sweat away in a too small shower cubicle, wasting water while he lost himself in her. He wanted to argue and he wanted to talk and he wanted to fall asleep watching bad movies with her. 

But he couldn’t- she was a million lifetimes away, and she kept saying _if_ instead of _when_ , as if she’d already resigned herself to the fact that they weren’t meant to cross paths again. 

He didn’t know what made him angrier at this point- the way she needled and pried into his past, or the way she held out the tantalising offer of her heart only to remind him of every hurdle in the way of him taking it. 

He was too old to be giddy and stupid over a broad, especially not someone like Shepard. 

He sighed and glanced down at the screen, at her stupidly severe expression and laughed once, a tired sound that wasn’t really amused so much as just resigned. He wasn’t used to being important to someone, to having someone insist that his private pain and anger was theirs also, that any slight against him was a slight against her.

Love suddenly seemed easy; loving her would never be a problem. Everything that came along with it, though? That seemed immensely exhausting, as attractive as it was terrifying. How did you make room in your heart for someone who wanted to face your demons with you, someone who wasn’t afraid of the things that had stalked you across the years? 

Elise Shepard was a terrifying woman, sometimes. 

He picked up the datapad again and set it on his lap, staring down at her. She had nightmares about batarians that left her screaming and sweat soaked and he got a hard-on thinking about shooting an old friend in the face; what a wretched god damn pair they were. 

He hit play again. “And you, Zaeed, if you’re still watching and haven’t thrown the screen across the room and called me all manner of names-”

“One out of two, do I get points for trying?”

“You can tell me, or you can keep it secret, and you can take me along to deal with Vido or you can do it on your own terms,” she said bluntly, her expression sincere. “I just want you to know that you aren’t without options, and that I love you. If you need someone to hold the bastard down while you gut him, I’ll be your girl.”

He let out a breath that he didn’t know he was holding. “Shit, Shepard...”

“I mean, let’s face it- I’m in love with a man who probably knows more ways to kill me than to get me off,” she said wryly, pushing her fringe back behind her ear for the upteenth time. “I think I must be some kind of fucking masochist- Miranda didn’t bring me back all that right in the head.”

He went to retort that she was clearly underestimating his abilities if she thought he was a better killer than a lover, but after a moment’s extra thought he shrugged instead. She probably wasn’t that far off the mark, to be fair. 

“And speaking of head...” She winced. “I might see if James if feeling kind enough to help with this hangover and is willing to part with some painkillers.” She shuffled forward in the seat, reaching for the camera.

She hesitated at the last moment. “Oh, and uh... I guess since I’ve acknowledged the fact that I’m making these films for you, Zaeed, I should say good morning and... I love you.”

“Love you too, sweetheart,” he murmured instantly, his fingers on the screen. It was easier to say, the more he said it. It didn’t seem to get trapped in his throat, the words clumsy and unwieldy. 

Maybe by the time he saw her again, he’d be able to say it without sounding like a fool.

The video rolled to a stop and he glanced over at the clock, wondering whether it was worth trying to cram the rest in or whether he’d be better off getting some rest. But it wasn’t like he had anywhere in particular to be, no particular time he had to be up by tomorrow, so he flicked back to the main list and selected the next file down. 

**2186:02:21**

**23:17**

**[RECORDING]**

The camera was still on the low table- what the hell was it anyway, did she have a fucking coffee table in the brig with her? Granted, she wasn’t your typical street-side thug, left to sober up in a filthy security cell, but still... 

Unlike the last few times she’d turned on the screen, she wasn’t perched in the chair, instead adjusting the camera to point to where she was sitting on the ground. Distracted for a moment by her bare legs- distracted for several moments, to be honest; the girl had fantastic fucking legs- he had to blink in surprise when he realised she was sitting in the centre of what looked like a carpet made of paper.

It took him a second or two to realise that that was exactly what it was- she’d taken dozens of sheets of paper and had stuck them together with bits of tape. And on the paper were hundreds of dots and interconnecting lines and the illegible scrawl that was her handwriting, and he frowned as he tried to work out why it was so familiar. 

“Right,” she said, sounding a bit breathless as she settled back in the centre of the paper where she’d obviously been sitting before. She was settled down on her knees, and her bare legs were the worst fucking distraction- all smooth brown skin and the occasional flex of muscle, and the plain black underpants she wore were sexier than any lingerie she’d ever indulged in for him. Granted, that could just have been his neanderthal brain perking up, desperate for anything she wanted to model for him, given the last few months of self imposed celibacy. 

There was a slightly manic look on her face, and there were dark blotches of ink all over her hands and knees- hardly surprising, given how huge the mess she was kneeling in was. 

“So it occurred to me that I probably should have been filming this,” she said abruptly, gesturing to the paper and the oddly familiar diagrams surrounding her, “because it’s all well and good to get carried away doing calculations and tactical simulations, but if I’m not actually keeping track of anything, it’s not really good to anyone and knowing me I’ll have forgotten everything by the morning. At least now I’ll have a record of my babblings.”

It hit him instantly, slamming into him like a krogan charge- she was kneeling on a hand-drawn map of the galaxy. Every dot was a planet or a star, every line a flight corridor. 

_She’d rebuilt the entire god damn galaxy by hand._

She was kneeling in the centre, on the wild and dangerous section where the Collectors had built their lair amongst black holes and collapsing stars, the axis of the galaxy, everything spinning slowly around her. That seemed fitting, in a way- she’d given everything to save it, even her life, and it seemed somehow appropriate that her paper galaxy should revolve around her, that she was the stabilising point.

“So, if we’re to assume that Bahak held some kind of tactical advantage for the Reapers,” she said, her voice faster than normal, as if she was afraid she was going to forget something and had to get it all out as fast as possible, “that implies that their entry point into the galaxy from dark space is likely to be along that region of space, which puts these solar systems at immediate risk.”

She leaned forward, coloured pen in hand, and drew a clumsy circle over the region of space in question. Her shirt rode up, showing off her stomach as she knelt over the map. 

Distractions, again.

“And if we’re to assume that those solar systems are at immediate risk, that gives us at least three Mass Relays that are at immediate risk of being compromised,” she continued, snatching up a different coloured pen and circling the tiny dots that clearly marked the relays. “And that’s without any available data as to what the top speed of a Reaper is without access to a Mass Relay, and whether or not they’re capable of threatening the stability of a region without the aid of the relays.”

She sat back again, the look in her eyes nothing short of breathtakingly terrifying. This was Commander Shepard, not Elise; this was the soldier, the Spectre- the human who inspired awe and fear in nearly every corner of the galaxy. This was a woman calmly discussing an interstellar invasion in her underwear as if it was completely normal.

God help him, he was getting turned on by a woman making plans for the end of the world.


	6. Chapter 6

Elise continued at the same rapid pace, oblivious to his ill timed arousal. The words spilled out of her like a flood, her hands gesturing madly as she rushed to get her point across before she lost the rhythm of her musings. “The implications are, of course, that the relays were constructed by the Reapers not just to control and channel the development of organic species, but also to funnel their expansion in particular ways in order to make their eventual conquest all the easier because a species that has evolved according to their specifications will be a species much easier to predict and dominate.”

She was drawing on the map as she spoke, red arrows and lines pointing in various directions that clearly made sense to her; Zaeed, squinting at the map and trying to ignore the allure of her legs, couldn’t make head or tail of what she was doing. “Now, the Citadel, in its capacity as a mass relay, was supposed to act as Plan A for the Reapers, and even given access to it- plus the element of surprise- the AI on Ilos implied that it still took the Reapers hundreds of years to complete their...” She hesitated, the wobble in her voice the first sign of her fear, but then she was ploughing onwards, sharp and firm and logical. The Spectre mask slipped back into place. “To complete their harvest, so we can assume that having lost the Citadel has cost them a huge combative edge and potentially allowed us up to hundreds of years to fight back.”

Crawling over to the edge of the map that she’d drawn the circle over a moment before, she kneeled in close to the paper and began to scribble a seemingly random assortment of numbers down, muttering to herself. Zaeed tried to zoom in, to get a better look at what she was doing, but the poor quality of the video combined with her chicken scratch handwriting made it all but impossible.

“The fuck are you doing, sweetheart?” he muttered, setting the datapad down on his lap and staring at her in confusion. The random assortment of numbers had begun to include her very poor approximation of letters as well, and then mathematical symbols. Clearly she was doing some sort of bullshit physics maybe? 

Fuck, for all he knew, she could have been trying to remember the number for the local pizza place. 

“Ahh, fuck,” she muttered, scribbling out the last thing she’d written and sitting back up again. She stared around at the map, as if she was looking for something to jump out at her. “I can’t remember the power output of a standard Alliance FTL drive off the top of my head, Tali did too much work for me to remember what’s normal.”

Scribbling a new series of numbers down on the map on what he was guessing looked like it was supposed to be the Serpent Nebula, she moved again, jotting down numbers all over the map and whispering madly to herself as she did so, occasionally attempting to count off on her fingers and giving up in frustration. At a loss as to what she was even doing, Zaeed distracted himself by watching the way the muscles in her legs flexed every time she moved to a new position, the slight curve of her back as she leaned out over the map, and the way her underwear clung so tantalisingly to her ass every time she turned enough for him to see.

Plain black cotton panties- god save him, he was a lost cause. 

She sat back again with a look of disgust on her face, her hands resting on her knees as she rested on her haunches. “Ugh, I really should have read up more on the current fleet numbers while I had access to those sorts of files,” she said, pushing her fringe out of her face as she eyed the map critically. “Really don’t think anyone is going to be polite enough to facilitate my desire for naval strength statistics and military readiness.”

“I’d be happy to facilitate some of your desires,” he said to himself, eyeing the ink stains on her knees and entertaining himself by imagining throwing her over his shoulder and carrying her kicking and screaming into a shower stall. Surely if he kept her in there for long enough, the stains would wash away amidst the exertions of his other plans for her?

That’d been one of the great advantages of fucking the captain of a starship- taking advantage of her private bathroom. Sure, it wasn’t anything fancy, military austerity at its finest, but god if he hadn’t enjoyed the hours they’d wasted together under the spray. There was even a time or two that EDI had breached Elise’s privacy protocols to politely remind them of water rationing regulations. 

Fuck, there was so much he missed about her. Her laugh and her smile, and the way her hair smelled just after she’d washed it. The way she could ping a batarian between the eyes from a hundred feet away without even hesitating as she ran, or the way she grinned a little madly just before she threw a punch. He missed just being in her presence, walking half a step behind her, unable to stifle the surge of smug pride he felt whenever she told some shithead where to get off. 

Bloodthirsty little thing, she was. Heart of gold and gore splattered face and he loved every goofy, violent inch of her.

Missing her hurt a lot more than he thought it would.

She’d kept talking while he was distracting himself with memories of shower sex and bloodied, ill-timed kisses, and there were more scribbles across her map by the time he looked down at the screen again. None of it made a lick of sense to him, but that was hardly a surprise- he hadn’t been able to work out what the hell she was talking about when he _had_ been paying attention. 

All he knew was that she thought she was gonna outwit the Reapers with some coloured pens and a few maths equations. Granted, if anyone was gonna do it, it’d be Shepard, but the coloured pens were pushing it a little. 

She was chewing on a pen and scowling down at the map again, a frown creasing her brow as she pondered something. “It would be really great if someone had actually managed to get some specs on the Reapers,” she muttered. “But no, blow one up in the bloody Citadel itself and somehow it mysteriously vanishes and no one thinks to study it. Find one in orbit and instead we let it fall into a dead star.” She snorted humourlessly. “Find a baby human Reaper and freak out about the implications in regards to reincarnation that cause you to question everything about the religion you’ve been doing your very best to ignore since the death of your family, continue to freak out and destroy it, rather than take it in for further study.”

The words ‘ _I told you so_ ’ were on the tip of his tongue, even if she couldn’t hear them and validate his triumph, but the expression on her face gave him pause. She didn’t talk about Mindoir all that often, and he couldn’t remember a single time she’d mentioned religion in the time they’d known each other. Pile of sanctimonious crowd-controlling bullshit, as far as he was concerned, and she’d never given any indication that she might feel differently. 

But that nightmarish incursion into the Collector base... had that really been a worse than normal sort of thing for her? Granted, being mauled by a giant fucking robot skeleton made of human juice wasn’t really his idea of a great afternoon, and the screams that fucker had let out whenever one of them had landed a hit on it still had him waking up in a cold sweat some nights, but Elise hadn’t let on that it’d upset her that badly. 

She’d shut him down instantly when he’d tried to agree with The Illusive Man’s point about keeping the ugly fucker, and he hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Too busy running for his life after she activated the timer on the bomb and what not. And after the Collector base had exploded behind them and they’d slammed back through the Omega 4 relay, well... what time they’d had left had been taken up with Shepard briefing the crew in preparation for their defection back to the Alliance and her eventual surrender.

They hadn’t had a lot of time for privacy, and what time they’d had had been filled with hard words and awkward unsaid feelings and urgent touches that had somehow only made him angrier afterwards. He’d still had the taste of her on his lips when he’d disembarked in Omega, the only stop she was willing to make before she headed for Arcturus. She’d left only a skeleton crew with her, only the bare minimum to make it back, and everyone else had filed off orderly after saying their goodbyes.

He hadn’t said what he’d wanted to say, hadn’t said a fraction of it. He should have asked her about her childhood, and he should have asked her about the Blitz, and he should have asked her what her favourite fucking ice cream flavour was. But he’d left a million things unsaid, and he hadn’t watched her fly off, too incensed at her goddamn sense of honour to stand and wave like a fucking housewife seeing a sweetheart off to work.

He grunted in frustration and slumped back against the futon, a hundred conflicting emotions flying through him at the memory. If she’d really been that upset about the Collector base, she should have said something. He should have guessed she was upset, he should have worked it out. He should have said goodbye.

He should have gone with her. 

“They wouldn’t even have arrested you, you stupid asshole,” he said, staring up at the roof. “With a ticket like yours, they would have just shot you on sight if you’d set foot on Arcturus. Fuck off with your moody heroics.”

She wouldn’t have let him go with her, even if he’d wanted to. She had a mean right hook and she hadn’t hesitated to use it on him in the past. If she’d thought his life was at risk, she wouldn’t have blinked- she’d have dropped him on the flight deck, dragged him to the airlock herself and kicked him unconscious into a shuttle to take him back to Omega’s main districts.

“I seem to have a talent for pissing people off despite my intentions,” she said wryly, and he had to laugh. He had no idea what she’d been saying in the minutes before that, too wrapped up in his own miserable little flashbacks, but her timing couldn’t have been better. He picked up the datapad again, still chuckling at the flash of guilt and mischief in her eyes as she elaborately crossed out something she’d been working on over on the edge of turian space. “It’s not my fault when they’re so incompetently _wrong_ , though. If they only stopped putting incompetent fools in positions of power, I wouldn’t keep having these problems.”

He laughed again, the tension bleeding out of him as he watched her. There was more ink on her hands and her knees, and there was a dark blue love heart on the back of her left hand with the initials Z.M. carefully written within. He smiled and shook his head- saviour of the galaxy and certified twelve year old. 

God, but he loved her. 

She blew at her fringe, grimacing as she stared down at the map; she sighed and tucked the loose hair out of the way and uncapped another pen. 

For the next half hour she moved slowly across the map, adding numbers and drawing arrows that ran in every direction possible, pausing every now and then to scribble something out and add a new batch of symbols and letters. Clearly she knew what she was doing, but he didn’t have a fucking clue why she’d forwarded it to him, of all people. Had the mysterious friend just forwarded on the whole collection of video files without checking them first? 

Doubtful- some of them posed a severe security risk. Others, if they were leaked, were likely to destroy diplomatic relations with other alien races for years to come. Not that he gave a shit about politics- overpriced assholes in overpriced suits offering hollow promises to each other and shitting on the little guys in the process. But it’d hurt her, and he couldn’t do anything to hurt her. 

So perhaps the mysterious friend knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t risk Elise’s reputation; perhaps they didn’t know him at all, and were hedging their bets based on what she’d revealed in the video. Maybe they were just guessing that he felt the same way she did.

It was a pretty colossal bet to take, all things considered. This wasn’t a simple matter of losing all your credits if you backed the wrong varren- if he so desired, he could post them all online and watch the fallout from the comfort of his couch. He could sell them to a news outlet, or to a foreign government. Hell, he could probably blackmail the Alliance with them, make a tidy profit from them as they scrabbled to cover their asses. 

A year ago, he would’ve done it. No questions asked, he would have taken the vids and sold them to the highest bidder- anything to fund his hunt for Vido and bring that asshole the just desserts he deserved. And even now the temptation was there- Shepard hadn’t let him have the one thing that had kept him crawling out of bed each morning these last twenty years, the one faint hope that’d kept him partially sane. She’d dangled it in front of him, almost tauntingly, and had snatched it back out of reach again because of her fucking bleeding heart. 

He wasn’t going to deny the temptation wasn’t there. Sell the vids, use the cash to find Vido, disappear amongst the stars... it’d be easy, really. There’d be other women, whores and tarts who’d offer him a painted smile and a body to lose himself in for the night. They wouldn’t be Elise Shepard, but what was one woman against twenty years of violent driving need for revenge?

“Fuck, Massani,” he snarled, disgusted by himself as he tossed the datapad to the side, the video still running. He didn’t know what was worse- the fact that he was considering betraying her, or the fact that he hadn’t already done it. The hesitation killed him- Elise and the chance for whatever she was offering him, or Vido and the chance to put his demons to bed?

Why was it even up for debate? The answer should have been so fucking obvious, he shouldn’t even have blinked. 

“... faster than light capabilities, which one would assume are superior to our own current technology, but the question is, by how much? My guess is marginal at best, given Sovereign’s reliance on the relays-”

He closed his eyes and ran his hands over his face wearily. Just the sound of her voice was enough to have him gritting his teeth in frustration and shame, the desire to hurt Vido slowly drowned out by the immense feelings of love he felt for Elise. He didn’t want to hurt her- he _couldn’t_ hurt her, even with the answer to all his problems sitting right there on the futon beside him.

Elise Shepard meant more to him than revenge.

“She promised you Vido,” he said to himself, his voice distressingly raw. He swallowed against the lump in his throat, digging his thumbs into the corner of his eyes as if that would settle the seething mess in his head. “She said she’d help you get him. She made a fucking promise to you, be a fucking man for once and keep her faith.”

She was still talking, some rubbish about static electrical discharge, something that didn’t mean anything to him. But her voice was a constant, the quiet hum in the background that dragged him back from being an unforgivable bastard. 

Eventually he got himself back under control, blinking away the ache in his eyes that he told himself was the pressure from his thumbs and most certainly wasn’t tears. Elise was still merrily at work, her shirt riding up to show off the little dip in the small of her back whenever she bent over the map. He smiled slightly, enjoying the sight.

Some things never changed, really.

She put a hand up to her forehead, looking mildly distressed, as if she were staring at a maths puzzle that had thwarted her for hours and had given her a headache; in a sense, that was precisely what she was staring at. “The assumption of course being that the Reapers need the relays just as much as the organic species they harvest, which implies that their average speed is not _significantly_ advanced compared to any of our ships-”

She broke off on a frustrated groan, running her hand up into her hair. “But then Joker observed Sovereign over Virmire making maneuvers that no modern ship is capable of performing, so what’s to say that they aren’t capable of excessively faster top speeds than we’ve seen so far and they just haven’t felt the need to utilise-”

Her frustrated groan became a strangled shriek. “But if that were the case then Sovereign and Saren wouldn’t have needed the conduit on Ilos to get them close to the Citadel, because if they were capable of outpacing any fleets the Council could throw at them then they wouldn’t-”

Elise threw her pen at the wall and flopped down onto the map, face first. She looked, to all intents and purposes, like she might have been throwing a tantrum. “This would be so much easier if someone would just give me a computer to run simulations on,” she said loudly, her voice muffled by the paper. “Or at least a calculator. Or a fucking ship and the freedom to do my goddamn job.”

“Having trouble there, sweetheart?” he chuckled, unable to help himself from admiring her legs and the curve of her hips as she lay there. 

She lay there for a few seconds, her breathing making the map crackle and move, and eventually she pushed herself onto her hands and knees, stretching as she did so. Unbidden, the image of her on her hands and knees before him went slamming through his thoughts, his hands on her hips as he pounded into her, her fingers twisted desperately in the sheets as she ground her ass against him, whispering his name over and over again. 

“Fuck’s sake,” he groaned, already hard again. “I ain’t seventeen anymore, woman. The fuck are you doing to me, trying to kill me?”

She didn’t hear him, of course; she sat back on her haunches, pushing her hair out of her face for the upteenth time as she sighed and looked around. “For all the good this did me,” she muttered, climbing wearily to her feet. “This is all pointless without up to date data and accurate statistics. I mean, I could probably make some very helpful observations if I had fleet numbers and naval movements, but that would of course require a great deal of-”

She sighed again. “Nope, no point. No one is going to give the accused war criminal access to military files. Not even the Alliance trust me, at the moment- there’s no way the other Council races would grant me access to their innermost military secrets.”

“Could always just take them and ask later,” he said pointedly, “if you weren’t stupid enough to go and get yourself locked up.”

She stooped to collect the map, folding it up with some effort. It was huge, and it took some maneuvering on her part- and laughter on his, watching her fight with it. But she finally had it folded up, and she tossed it onto the table beside the camera. She slumped down onto the couch, turning the camera with her foot to face her. 

“Zaeed, I apologise for the last hour or so, I know you’re probably bored to tears.” She grinned, despite her obvious dejection, and her gaze flickered to the camera lens. “Don’t lie to me, I know you too well.”

“Wouldn’t dream of lying to someone as astute as you, sweetheart,” he snickered. 

“And I swear there’s a point to all that rubbish,” she continued, chewing on a strand of hair as she stared off into the distance. “If, on the rare chance something goes terribly wrong and I am either fully incarcerated or assassinated, I want you to get that video to someone who can fucking well use it. Garrus or Anderson or someone we can trust- someone who takes the Reaper threat seriously and will understand what the fuck I was talking about and who can take the basics of it and turn it into a real simulation. We need every tool we can possibly find against the Reapers, and if I’m not around to round them up, well...” She glanced back at the camera. “I need you to help whoever can round them up.”

The implications of what she was saying hit him like a battering ram to the chest. “You’re not fucking well dying on my watch, sweetheart,” he said. “Not on my watch. Not happening.”

“And I can well imagine the foul platitudes you might be hurling at the camera right now, so I’ll end it there. My instructions are simple enough. “ She took a deep breath, her eyes serious. “Zaeed, I love you. I realise that this was probably not what you signed on for with me, and I’ll not blame you if you choose to disregard this message. I’ll admit, there’s a part of me that’s terrified that you won’t even have watched this far. That you stopped days ago, or you never started watching in the first place. I wouldn’t blame you for that.”

She... she expected him to have given up on her, but she’d still entrusted him with such an excruciatingly sensitive video file? 

“But if you are still watching, I love you,” she said softly. “I’m not saying that to try and guilt you into helping me. I love you regardless of what you do, and I’ll just hope that my instincts are correct and you are still watching.” 

He groaned. “Fuck, Elise, you get under a guy’s skin, you know that?”

“I love you Zaeed,” she said again, “and I hope you’re well.”

Saying that, she reached forward and hit stop on the recording, and the timer ran to the end. Groaning again, he wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep and forget about everything until morning. Or next week. He didn’t want to think about being a man that Elise Shepard found worthy of love and worthy of trust. What the fuck had he done to earn her trust? It was an exhausting and terrifying prospect, and he wished more than ever that he could have her there beside him, because learning all of this, learning his limitations and the strength of his love for her, doing all of it alone was as harrowing as it was incredible. 

He missed her, and it hurt far too much.

Sighing wearily, he flicked back to the main menu and selected the next file down.


End file.
